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pressed against me. I was too tall
for her, and she was standing on her toes, her combat boots tapping
mine.
    This was the kind of attachment dreams
were made of. The fucked-up guy and the crazy girl.
    We kept kissing.
    And kissing some more.
    Life as we knew it was going to
change. After tonight, everything would be different. We couldn’t
go back and do things over. But by the same token, our future
remained uncertain. Only now wasn’t the time to think about
that.
    When I lifted my mouth from hers, she
said, “Your barbell does make kissing hot.”
    She had no idea what else I could do
with it. But I wasn’t going to take her in that direction. I moved
gently away from her.
    “ Let’s go outside,” I
said, eager to show her how truly romantic I could be.

Chapter Ten
     
    I opened the window, and she gaped at
me.
    “ We’re going to sneak out
that way?” she asked.
    I nodded. “It’ll be easier than trying
to slip out the front door without being seen. Or one of the side
exits or whatever.” In actuality, Abby could leave anytime she
wanted. This wasn’t a mental ward, like at a state or county
hospital. Her admittance to The Manor had been voluntarily.
Fancy-ass places like this usually were.
    She climbed out the window first, and
I followed her. She glanced back and grinned. “Good thing my room
is on the first floor.”
    The Manor didn’t have multiple
stories. “Everything here is on the first floor.”
    “ I know, but good thing,
huh?”
    I smiled. She was being girlish and
giddy. I grabbed her hand as soon as our feet hit solid
ground.
    I guided her around the side of the
building and toward the garden. We crept around like cat burglars,
only we wouldn’t be stealing anything.
    We came to a stone wall with an iron
gate shaped into a whimsical design.
    “ What should we do now?”
she asked.
    “ We’re going to go over
the gate.” It seemed easier than trying to scale the wall. “Just
put your feet through the swirls at the bottom and keep climbing
until you reach the bar at the top.”
    She nudged me ahead of her. “You go
first.”
    That was probably a good idea. Once I
was on the other side, I could help her down.
    I climbed the gate like a primate,
moving up and over it as if it were a tree. Thankfully there were
softly lit security lights keeping the area from being too
dark.
    “ Your turn,” I told
her.
    She took her time, clutching the
wrought iron carefully. Once she got closer to me, I circled my
hands around her waist, making sure that she didn’t stumble before
her feet touched the earth.
    “ I made it,” she
said.
    “ You most certainly did.”
I gave her a loud, happy kiss, smacking her lips with
mine.
    She squealed and wrapped her arms
around me. Tonight, life was good, becoming everything it should
be.
    I said, “Before I take you to your
surprise, I want to tell you about it.”
    “ You can’t just let me see
it?”
    “ I’d rather tell you
first.” I thought that was the best way to make this work.
Otherwise, how was she going to see what I wanted her to see? In
order to plant the right hallucination in her mind, I needed to
describe the upcoming visual.
    “ Okay. Go ahead. Tell
me.”
    “ It’s in the middle of the
garden. In the arbor covered in wisteria. It’s especially pretty
now because the flowers are blooming.” I paused for effect. “We
made a fairy den out of it.”
    Her gaze locked onto mine.
“We?”
    “ Me and Face and Bud. We
did it together. Face flew up and around the wisteria and hung
strings of lights throughout the vines. He put lights inside the
arbor itself, too. Bud directed the whole scenario, making sure
each of us did our jobs.”
    “ What was your
job?”
    “ I decorated the den with
streamers and candles and pots of flowers. I also got the food and
laid it out on a pretty blanket. It’s an assortment of pastries:
cupcakes with buttercream frosting and colorful sprinkles,
custard-filled pie, chocolates in the shapes of hearts. I